Wisconsin native, conservative critic of everything.
"Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God." ---G K Chesterton
"The only objective of Liberty is Life" --G K Chesterton
"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions" --G K Chesterton
"A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition." -- Rudyard Kipling

Saturday, June 21, 2008

The Argument FOR Clothing-Optional

...the article mentions that the nudity has to be confined to the private property--people can't go to the parking lot without dressing, and so on, because there are laws against public nudity. But why should these laws exist at all? Does it hurt fully-dressed people for naked people to be walking around? If you don't like public nudity, after all, no one's forcing you to participate in it, and if it makes you uncomfortable you don't have to look. Sure, children may be affected, but that's less important than the rights of adults to be self-actualized and to pursue happiness however they define that concept. Some people are just happier without clothes, so shouldn't they have the right to go without them whenever they want?

Isn't it, really, bigoted to insist that clothes are the normative standard for society, and that people who prefer nakedness ought to cover up in public? Plenty of ancient cultures didn't have the same attitude toward clothing that we do now, and wore very little. If we insist that clothes must be worn in public places, aren't we just imposing our morality on people who disagree?It doesn't harm any dressed people for naked people to be walking down the streets, going to work, going shopping, or doing anything else the rest of us do. There's really no reason at all aside from personal, religious beliefs to insist that everyone wear clothes in public--and it's unconstitutional to impose our religious or moral beliefs on the rest of the public.

In fact, if our only standard for changing laws is that the desired change doesn't immediately or demonstrably hurt anybody else, then there's no reason not to become a clothing-optional society.... But in our current social climate, I can't think of any compelling state interest, divorced from all religious, moral, cultural, or civilizational concerns, that would override the right of nudists to choose their own attire--or lack thereof.Heh.